Because of its material characteristics, the sonic poses a challenge to the influential paradigm of religion as mediation. This article makes a case for a neo-phenomenological analytic of atmospheres in order to do justice to the sonic in anthropological approaches to religion. Approaching the sonic as atmospheric half-things, I propose a…[Read more]

Study about the construction of organs in North Spain by Cavaillé-Coll (19th century)

Studiy about the role of music at the court of Alfonso X

Focussing on the Duchy of Cornwall’s organisational structure during the Wars of the Roses, this survey examines the principal offices (which evolved around administration of its marine and terrene regalities) and personnel (administrative elite) in Cornwall and Devon. Consideration of successive Princes’ Councils and counsellors (and Councils of…[Read more]

Avery Cornburgh (d.1487) of Bere Ferrers (Devon) and Dovers (Essex) – a Lancastrian, Yorkist, and Tudor household servant – was one of the appreciable numbers of crown servants utilised in local government during the fifteenth century. Serving in Cornwall and Essex as JP, MP, sheriff, and commissioner, he was prominent in Cornish affairs as a res…[Read more]

(Re-)constructing the lineage of one lesser-gentry family in eastern Lancashire (from the thirteenth-century Oldham family to their sale of Werneth Hall), this study – utilising wills, inventories, deeds, parish registers, and other archives – surveys the Cudworths’ socio-political, religious, and educational interests, as well as their wider ass…[Read more]

Abstract submitted to Timbre 2023 conference. This abstract describes a new approach to understanding consonance and dissonance.

Though English supporters of the Oxford theologian John Wycliffe (d.1384)—known as “Lollards”—had been drawn from academic and noble/gentry circles during the later-fourteenth and early-fifteenth centuries, persecution, equation of heresy with sedition, and the failure of Sir John Oldcastle’s Rebellion (1414) ensured overt abandonment of Lollard i…[Read more]

The formalization of sound changes as finite state transducers is implicit already in the Neogrammarians. For at least six decades scholars have recognized the potential of transducers for improving the speed and rigor of research in historical linguists, but almost no historical linguists actually use them. This article identifies the obstacles…[Read more]

In the course, I give a basic introduction into some of the recent developments in the field of computational historical linguistics. While this field is predominantly represented by phylogenetic approaches with whom scholars try to infer phylogenetic trees from different kinds of language data, the approach taken here is much broader,…[Read more]

The weblog Computer-Assisted Language Comparison in Practice, published on the Hypotheses platform for scientific blogging (https://calc.hypotheses.org/), offers tutorials and discussion notes on computer-assisted approaches to the history and diversity of languages. A substantial part of its content is contributed as part of the ERC Starting…[Read more]

This dissertation deals with aristocratic historiography and political legitimation in late-medieval Portugal (late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries). It offers a perspective into the historical imaginary of the late-medieval Portuguese aristocracy; an imaginary that underlay the argumentation of members of this social class in defence of their…[Read more]

Viking invasions and settlements left substantial legacies in late Anglo-Saxon England, attested in legal texts as a division between areas under Dena lage and those under Ængla lage. But how legal practice in Scandinavian-settled England functioned and differed from Anglo-Saxon law remains unclear. III Æthelred, the ‘Wantage Code’, provides criti…[Read more]

Der Beitrag untersucht das Verhältnis des Bildprogramms zur Weltchronik des Rudolf von Ems zu anderen Bildprogrammen von volkssprachlichen Weltchroniken.
Es gibt keinen für Rudolf von Ems typischen Illustrationsmodus. Weder Rudolf noch irgendeine andere Weltchronik hat eine derart individuell ausgeprägte und von der biblischen Grundlage sich ab…[Read more]

The article focuses on one of the most famous accounts of the events of 1204: the De Signis by Niketas Choniates. It demonstrates how Choniates constructed a (semi)fictional account of the assaults against the Byzantine culture and identity through a constellation of symbols and passages drawn from the Greek Classics. The article comprises three…[Read more]

This chapter examines the revolutin in media within music based on Friedrich Kittler’s work. It highlights Kittler’s musical preferences, from Richard Wagner to Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd. For Kittler this music exemplified an “other music” that was based on a cutout from the totality of “worldwide noise” as it was theorized after Arthur Schopen…[Read more]

This contribution examines an early modern manuscript, AM 899 4to, from Sweden, which features the Stora Rimkrönikan (Erikskrönikan, Karlskrönikan og Sturekrönikan) from the Swedish Middle Ages. AM 899 4to is extensively annotated. It shows that the medieval texts were read and received in modern times. The various annotations are here for the fir…[Read more]

Lecture, given at the Fifth Pavia International Summer School for Indo-European Linguistics (Università di Pavia, 2022-09-05/09)

The age-old search for an understanding of “consonance” has been hobbled from the beginning by the expectation that a silver bullet can be found. In this section from a book-in-progress, the historical searches are analyzed for their failings and a new approach is suggested based on observing the effects of tonal sounds within the context of…[Read more]